THE Election Commission has rolled out a new ‘e-sign’ feature on its ECINet portal and app, which requires those seeking to register as voters, or applying for deletion and corrections, to verify their identity using their Aadhaar-linked phone numbers.
The EC move comes less than a week after Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi alleged the misuse of online voter deletion forms in Karnataka’s Aland constituency, ahead of the 2023 state Assembly polls, as part of his press conference on “electoral fraud”.
Earlier, applicants could submit forms on the EC apps and portal after connecting a phone number with an existing Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) number, with no verification done of whether the details indeed belonged to them.
The e-sign feature, not present till Monday, could be seen on the EC’s ECINet portal on Tuesday while submitting forms. An applicant filling Form 6 (for registration of new electors), or Form 7 (for objecting to proposed inclusion/deletion of a name in existing rolls), or Form 8 (for correction of entries), on the ECINet portal now has to clear the e-sign requirement.
This means the portal warns the applicant to ensure that their name on the voter card that they are using for their application is the same as the one on their Aadhaar, and that the mobile number they are using is also linked to Aadhaar.
There is no change in the Form 7 itself used to apply for deletions or objections, which requires sharing of all the details of the person whose name is sought to be deleted or objected to (the reasons can be death, shifted, ineligible due to not being an Indian citizen or under 18 years).
After an applicant has filled the form, they are taken to an external e-sign portal hosted by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), which operates under the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. On the CDAC portal, the applicant is required to enter their Aadhaar number and then generate an “Aadhaar OTP”, where the OTP is sent on the phone number linked with that Aadhaar number.
The applicant has to then consent to the Aadhaar-based authentication and complete the verification. Only after that is completed is the applicant re-directed to the ECINet portal to submit the form.
With the e-sign feature being rolled out, sources say the possibility of what happened in Aland is greatly reduced.
At his press conference on September 18, Gandhi said that “someone” had tried to get names of about 6,000 voters deleted from booths in Aland through online submissions, and that in most cases, the identities of actual voters had been misused to submit the application forms. The phone numbers used to get an OTP to submit the forms were also found to not belong to the electors in whose names the forms were filed.
In February 2023, the poll panel had done its verification of the deletion applications for Aland, and filed an FIR in the case.
The ECINet, launched earlier this year, is one portal and app that combines around 40 earlier apps and portals of the EC meant for voters and officials, including ERONet. The EC had launched ERONet in 2018 as a centralised portal for Electoral Registration Officers (EROs).
Through ECINet, electors can submit forms and election officials can process them. In each case, the Booth Level Officer and ERO concerned are supposed to conduct an inquiry.
In response to Gandhi’s allegations, the EC had said in a statement: “No deletion of any vote can be done online by any member of the public, as misconceived by Shri Rahul Gandhi. No deletion can take place without giving an opportunity of being heard to the affected person. In 2023, certain unsuccessful attempts were made for deletions in Aland Assembly constituency and an FIR was filed by the authority of the EC itself to investigate the matter.”
The poll panel also said that a physical verification of the 6,018 names for which deletions were sought in Aland found that only 24 applications were correct. Applications with respect to the remaining 5,994 were not processed as they were found to still be residing in the same places.